KABUL/MOSCOW: Authorities in Afghanistan have identified up to six people they want to question about the killing of two German journalists shot dead while camping, a senior official said yesterday.

The two Germans, a man and woman, were killed in the early hours of Saturday when gunmen attacked them in their tent in Baghlan Province, about 120 kilometres north of Kabul.

"We have identified four to six people in the area where the attack took place," said the governor of Baghlan, Sayed Ikram Mahsomi. "We are going to make arrests as soon as we get more information."

The Germans had not been robbed, Mahsomi said, adding the attackers were "government opponents."

"They just wanted to kill them to disrupt security," he said.

Violence has surged across Afghanistan this year, mostly in the south and east where Taliban militants have been battling foreign and government troops.

Attacks have also taken place in Kabul, the west and the north but Baghlan had been quiet recently.

Crime has surged across Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban five years ago.

Afghan authorities said the two journalists worked for the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. They were travelling from Baghlan to the central province of Bamiyan when they stopped to camp for the night on Friday evening.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the Taliban were not responsible.

The two journalists had just spent some time with German NATO troops in the north of the country. Germany has a contingent of about 2,750 troops with NATO's Afghan mission.

"They were trying to have a European night in Afghanistan," Bashary said. "It was a mistake even an Afghan cannot spend the night in a deserted area," said Zemarai Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman in Kabul.

Russian reporter murdered

In another development, an execution-style slaying of reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was covering conflicts in Chechnya, sparked outrage in Russia and abroad yesterday.

The United States and the Council of Europe joined Russian politicians, journalists and the public in condemning her murder at her home in central Moscow late on Saturday.

Politkovskaya, 48, was shot in her apartment building as she stepped out of a lift on her way to fetch shopping bags from her car. The killer first fired in her chest, then finished her off with a shot to the head, Russian news agencies quoted police sources as saying.

Source: China Daily